Construction Well Underway at Fridley's Latest Senior Living Complex

At the intersection of Old Central Avenue and Mississippi Street, where Sandee’s Restaurant once stood, the third floor of the The Landmark of Fridley, a new senior living complex, is now being framed in wood.

When the apartment building is completed in August, it will boast 70 units, including eight designated for independent living, 48 assisted living residencies and 14 studio apartments for memory care, said Scott Hickok, Fridley’s community development director.

There has been a small boom in senior living construction in the area—White Pine Senior Living recently completed the 40-unit first phase of its construction and the owner of the Columbia Arena has proposed a plan to turn the vacant building into senior housing.

“Combined with White Pine, [the Landmark has] really helped fill a void for senior living options in Fridley,” Hickok said. “For years we were described as the ‘hole in the doughnut’: There was senior housing all around Fridley, but there weren’t a lot of senior housing options in Fridley.”

Yet Hickok, other city officials and developers say there is still demand for more senior housing.

According to 2010 census data, 14 percent of Fridley residents are older than 65, a 2 percentage-point increase since 2000.

Hickok said there have been few independent living units constructed recently in Fridley; Landmark has only eight such units.

“Being that these are mostly assisted living and memory care units, there may be some more room in Fridley for market-rate independent living in the future,” he said.

Julie Jones, Fridley’s planning manager, agreed with this assessment.

“We had a lot of calls from people in the community saying, ‘Yeah, we’re just looking for a regular senior apartment building,’” she said. “They weren’t necessarily looking for all the special dining and care needs that assisted living provides—maybe they just wanted to move out of their house and move into something where they didn’t have to shovel the driveway and mow the lawn anymore.”

Landmark Housing
Roger Fink, a vice president at Trident Development, which is constructing Landmark, said his company does a thorough statistical analysis before deciding where to build.

“Our demographic data led us to believe that there might be an unmet need for senior housing in Fridley,” he said.

The Landmark will have a commercial kitchen staffed by a full-time chef, a coffee shop, a beauty salon, a wellness center and a chapel, Fink said.

Residents are an average of 84 years old at Trident’s existing facilities elsewhere, he added, and the Landmark will have 24-hour staffing and nursing available. Tealwood Management of Bloomington will supervise operations once construction is complete.

Fink said Trident chose the Sandee’s site, just south of , because its size and proportions could accommodate the kind of complex Trident wanted to build.

“Fridley doesn’t have an enormous number of available properties of that size,” he said. “This site was attractive to us because it had the right dimensional attributes as well as a prominent location on Mississippi and Old Central.”

Potential residents interested in more information can call 763-571-7355.